Category Archives: Advertising

Going to the Oscars? Your chariot awaits… Then and now…

February 22, 2019 by Vickie Lester

March 26, 1958: The 30th Academy Awards were big for David Lean and Bridge on the River Kwai and for an actress named Joanne Woodward who toted home a statue for her performance in The Three Faces of Eve. On her big night out Miss Woodward wore an evening gown she had stitched together herself. While today’s stars have a retinue of stylists, makeup artists, and hairdressers arrive at their homes to make them camera-ready; Joanne went to the studio. […]

Categories: Advertising, Architecture, Choreography, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Film, History, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Marriage, Movies, Photography, Theater, Travel, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: "The Three Faces of Eve", 30th Academy Awards, David Lean, Hollywood Blvd, Joanne Woodward, Oscar street closures 2019, Pantages Theater, Paul Newman, Ramon Novarro, The Oscar statuette was designed by Cedric Gibbons.

Filming began…I found there were an infinite number of ways to cop a feel.

September 15, 2018 by Vickie Lester

This is Lucille Ball, onetime fashion model, mother of the sit-com, actor-comedian, studio exec, TV pioneer. She had her ups and downs, everybody does. What I find fascinating is that she nurtured friendships that lasted a lifetime with women in film and television. I must have been carrying that thought in my mind when I started my recent novel. Just how defining those friendships are, and how nobody in Hollywood really talks about them. What also was clanging around in […]

Categories: Advertising, Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Literature, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Publishing, Story, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #amwriting, forever friends and Hollywood, Hollywood novel, light comedy, Lucille Ball, nanny to a movie star's kids

Strangers on the internet — Exchanging glances

September 8, 2018 by Vickie Lester

Wondering on the internet What were the chances… Hello, Mercury! Sorry, got distracted there for a minute. Shall we get reacquainted? I used to post here all the damn time about things that struck my fancy, like Hollywood history, cool architecture, and fabulous books. Then I self-published a novel, and poppets, I did go on and on. Then a couple of things happened, I was in the midst of writing another book when the political scene went cockeyed, and I […]

Categories: Advertising, Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Life, Literature, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Publishing, Story, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #amwriting, Aldous Huxley, Anita Loos, Hollywood novel, narrative, rewrite, voice

Stealing a line from Billy Wilder, “I am not a gal writing deep-dish revelations.”

July 21, 2018 by Vickie Lester

You all know (I think…I must have mentioned it before…) that I started this blog because I was told I had to. The surprising and wonderful thing is that I love the people it’s introduced me to. I never expected that. Getting back to the had to it all started because I had written this book, and publishers—oh yes, and we all know what happened to the publishing deal and I won’t bore you with that again—anyway, publishers wouldn’t look […]

Categories: Advertising, Blogging, Books, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Life, Literature, Los Angeles, Movies, Mystery, Palm Springs, Photography, Publishing, Romance, Story, Travel, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #itsinhiskissbyvickielester, Billy Wilder, Billy WIlder quote, Hollywood behind the scenes, I don't take what I do too seriously, I have a lot of fun with words, publishing deal, screenwriter, some like it hot gif, writing influences

“Our office lunches consisted of peanut butter and Jello sandwiches, served with slugs of vodka.” Nicky Haslam

February 2, 2018 by Vickie Lester

The world was interconnected, even before the Internet. Nicky Haslam worked with Diana Vreeland (peanut butter and Jello?), who was a dear friend of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, seen here reading Jack Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD. Just this morning I was walking when I saw a neighbor sitting on his front step, scarf wrapped around his neck, cigarette in one hand, book in another, intently reading the same thing in the first rays of the sun. A book is a gateway […]

Categories: Advertising, Art, Blogging, Books, Cooking, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Film, Friendship, Gastronomy, History, Hollywood, Life, Literature, London, Memoir, New York, Photography, Publishing, Recipes, Story, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: author William Kuhn, cookbook, decorator Nicky Haslam, Diana Vreeland, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Jello, Lady Diana Cooper, Nicky Haslam, Reading Jackie, unbound

Shh! I’m reading.

October 13, 2017 by Vickie Lester

For ten days author William Kuhn and I have been talking about writing, reading, screenplays, books, black and white photography, Los Angeles, the dream factory, and what and who we love. A tall order and today we wrap it all up. But I wanted you, dear readers, to know some of the most astute things I’ve read about reading and writing come from the pen of my friend, and they are in the book above. I’m going to quote now. […]

Categories: Advertising, Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Literature, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Publishing, Story, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: another reason I love L.A., author William Kuhn, book editor, interview, Jaqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Reading Jackie, Susannah Corwin, why I write

She lived to be 104 and devoted her life to film…

October 10, 2017 by Vickie Lester

No, not Garbo. Although the woman I’m talking about did edit Camille, and was a pioneer in her field… Today William Kuhn asks me what the biggest misconception is about Hollywood. Find out what I said, and read a behind the scenes story about Margaret Booth. Link at the bottom of the page. Born in Los Angeles on Jan. 16, 1898, Booth started in films in 1915 as a “patcher” — a film joiner — for Griffith. He gave […]

Categories: Advertising, Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Story, Theater, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: behind the scenes in Hollywood, camille was edited by Margaret Booth, film editor, glamour, Greta Garbo, interview, Irving Thalberg, Margaret Booth, mutiny on the bounty, Susannah Corwin

…we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language… Oscar Wilde

October 9, 2017 by Vickie Lester

Author William Kuhn and I both spent some formative years in London. We comprised part of the tide of children in dowdy woolen uniforms that crossed the city every day by tube or bus (or a combination of both) to school. We scratched out essays in fountain pen with consistently ink stained fingers, and probably, if pressed, could remember our Latin declensions. And I won’t get into the Latin version of Jingle Bells, well, I’ll just say it had something […]

Categories: Advertising, Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, London, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Publishing, Story, Theater, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: author William Kuhn, Frances Marion, interview, Latin, literary, Oscar Wilde, over sharing, social media, Susannah Corwin

“Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes — and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he’s had his first one.” Ernest Hemingway

October 7, 2017 by Vickie Lester

Writers can be quick with the barbed quip. Sometimes they’re cruel to each other. Sometimes they are vicious about who employs them (like a movie studio), or where they live (like Los Angeles). This city has caught a lot of flack from the literary world. William Faulkner, a prolific and talented screenwriter — and by most accounts a sweet gentleman — had some famously rude things to say about the industry, and the place that, for many years, financed his […]

Categories: Advertising, Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Literature, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Story, Theater, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: dream factory, Ernest Hemingway, I used to write screenplays, interview, screenwriter, Susannah Corwin, Vickie Lester, William Faulkner, writer

← Older posts

BEGUILING HOLLYWOOD

If you want a little historical perspective you're home.